I recently bought a Brother laser printer, plugged it into an outlet previously used for a laser printer, and it popped the house circuit breaker that the outlet is on. The circuit breaker is an AFCI type. According to Brother, it’s a known problem, where their laser printers can trigger a false positive, causing AFCI breakers to pop unnecessarily. They have a printer firmware update that’s supposed to fix it. Unfortunately, the update is offered for Windows and macOS, but not Linux, which I use (and I don’t have ready access to a Windows or macOS computer).
Is there any kind of device I can plug between the printer and wall socket to prevent popping the breaker (the issue is related to arc fault sensing, not exceeding the current rating on the line)?
If not, is this problem specific to the design of Brother printers, or common to other brands of laser printers? I’ve been using laser printers for decades and this is the first time I’ve encountered the issue.
